Healthy Ridicule: The Republicans have some fun at the president’s expense.
Here was our favorite line from Mitt Romney’s convention speech: “President Obama promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.”
We liked it even better when we saw that the New York Times’s Nicholas Kristof had tweeted: “Seriously, Romney’s speech esp troubled me by mocking rising seas/climate change. The dismissiveness was appalling.” Gaia is a jealous Goddess, and She will not be mocked!
It actually hadn’t occurred to us that the Romney line was a repudiation of global warmism. If so, that’s lagniappe. What we enjoyed was the deft way in which Romney punctured Obama’s self-aggrandizement—by quoting his most immodest promise ever, pausing for effect, then making an almost comically modest promise of his own.
Previewing Romney’s speech last week, Peggy Noonan advised him to use humor: “President Obama can’t stand to be made fun of. His pride won’t allow it, his amour propre cannot countenance a joke at his own expense. If Mr. Romney lands a few very funny lines about the president’s leadership, Mr. Obama will freak out. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
Romney managed to do so at least once. In a somewhat similar vein was the more-in-sorrow-than-anger condescension of his assertion that “I wish President Obama had succeeded, because I want America to succeed.” No doubt journalism’s fearless “fact checkers” will be on the case. FACT: Romney is GLAD Obama failed! PANTS ON FIRE!!!!
If Romney can strike a similar tone face to face with the president, the debates ought to be a blast. And he wasn’t the only one having fun at Obama’s expense. Clint Eastwood, a former mayor of Carmel, Calif., performed an apparently improvised routine in which he carried on a dialogue with an empty chair in which he pretended the president was sitting. It was very odd, but the crowd loved it. And, as Rhetorican.com notes, the president felt compelled to issue a rebuttal: a photo of a chair with him in it!